IGNACIO LOBOS / ILOBOS@STARBULLETIN.COM
New Hampshire's White Mountains become a palette of color during the fall. But the changing leaves are not the only colorful sights in New England.

Fall palette

Star-Bulletin assistant city editor Ignacio Lobos just returned from New England, where the season blossoms in festive color

In early autumn, the monochromatic leaves of New England bloom into brilliant yellows, oranges and reds. In this fanciful transformation from brilliant green, the leaves' march to death becomes a colorful celebration of life. By the tens of thousands, leaf peepers, as they're known, travel the highways of New England searching for the right spot, the one photogenic spot of exploding color, that will be captured by their endlessly clicking cameras.

The colors of autumn are the colors of the harvest. Of Halloween, of the coming winter. Everywhere in New England, pumpkins and squash of all colors, some as dark as the night, compete for attention with the changing leaves, the blooming flowers and fruits.

In Maine, at a state fair, as blue ribbons are passed out to the best tomato, the biggest pumpkin or plumpest pink porker, there's already a chill in the air.

The days are shorter, too. The early morning fog that shrouds the White Mountains of New Hampshire sticks around a little longer, muting nature's colorful displays.

Green gives way to a palette of colors, and the reds, yellows and oranges soon will give way to white, the absence of color, the cold snow that will bury everything in its path.

By the spring, when everything turns brilliant green again, there will be no leaf peepers. A shame, really, to have witnessed death, no matter how colorful it might have been, without witnessing the miracle of birth.